


in every golden trace

by callunavulgari



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: Book 3: The King of Attolia, F/M, M/M, Multi, Non-Explicit Sex, Polyamory, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:02:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21827899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari
Summary: For as long as Costis can remember, he’s had two names scored across the skin atop his ribs, one on either side of his rib cage, nearly perfect mirrors to one another. The first is precise and elegant, a flowing script that is perfectly legible to any Attolian who cares to read it.Irene, it reads, curving upwards just where ribcage meets stomach.The second name is the first’s precise opposite. Cramped script that is jagged and slanting, startlingly blocky in places and smooth in others, the text unfamiliar to Costis’s young eyes. He cannot read it, and for a long time, doesn’t know the language to be Edissian. He is twelve years old when someone reads it for him, and he resents it from then on. He is Attolian, proud to be Attolian, and that even a fraction of his soul is not is unthinkable.Eugenides, it reads, it too curving with the slant of his rib.
Relationships: Attolia | Irene/Eugenides/Costis Ormentiedes
Comments: 8
Kudos: 129
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	in every golden trace

**Author's Note:**

  * For [musicspeakstoo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicspeakstoo/gifts).



> Happy Yule! I know that you said you weren't too fond of AUs in this fandom, but this idea just would not let me go.

For as long as Costis can remember, he’s had two names scored across the skin atop his ribs, one on either side of his rib cage, nearly perfect mirrors to one another. The first name is precise and elegant, a flowing script that is perfectly legible to any Attolian who cares to read it. 

_Irene_ , it reads, curving upwards just where ribcage meets stomach.

The second name is the first’s precise opposite. Cramped script that is jagged and slanting, startlingly blocky in places and smooth in others, the text unfamiliar to Costis’s childlike gaze. He cannot read it, and for a long time, doesn’t know the language to be Edissian. 

He is twelve years old when someone reads it for him, and he resents it from then on. He is Attolian, proud to be Attolian, and that even a fraction of his soul is not is unthinkable.

 _Eugenides_ , it reads, it too curving with the slant of his rib.

He puts it from his mind. Doesn’t think of it. Thinks only of Irene, with her perfect Attolian scrawl. His one day match, who will find him when he needs her most. 

He grows, stretches in length, growing first scrawny and leggy and then filling out once he learns how to properly hold a sword. He joins the military. Fights in his first battle. Becomes squad leader.

Often, during the quiet nights when it is just him and his own thoughts, he thinks to wonder who she is. Who _they_ are. She will be tall, with dark curls and an enigmatic smile. Noble bearing, an attendant in the palace, perhaps. But when it comes to thinking of that second name, Costis finds that he cannot picture their face. He knows little of Eddis and for much of his life has made a point of keeping that knowledge to a minimum. 

Eugenides is a mystery. He could be tall or short, fat or thin, a scholar or a soldier. Costis never plans to make the journey into the mountains, so he can’t even begin to fathom how their paths might cross. They could be a bard or some other storyteller, come to make a name for themselves at court. A scholar to visit their library. An ambassador, to broker something like peace. Or, perhaps war will come, and Costis will cut his soulmate down in battle and never know until the name fades from his skin. 

He doesn’t like to think of that possibility. 

As a child, it was a simple matter to put that second name from his mind. To never dress in front of others, to hide it behind cloth and later, armor. As an adult, it is not so simple a thing.

As a man grown, he dreams of them. An endless parade of possibilities, silhouettes who bend to kiss him on the crown of his head or the bow of his lips. They gather him close, forms indistinct, and though it is silly and only a dream, he thinks that he has never felt such love. 

On a starless night that is as nondescript as it is quiet, Costis overhears it. The name. His name - second and most unknown. The whole of the palace has been crowing for hours about the capture - some Eddisian thief and his retinue taken prisoner, but it is only in the narrow hours of the morning when he is already three cups deep that Costis hears someone speak the name aloud.

Eugenides. The thief of Eddis. 

They have him in the dungeon, Aris tells him. He’s been screaming for hours. The queen is torturing him. She plans to hang him. 

Costis listens to all this, his stomach twisting, his mouth dry, too glad that he is not in the palace. What would he do? Free the man and be labeled a traitor to his country? Speak to him? Listen to his thief scream? Would he be able to stand outside that door and just listen? Or would it force his hand?

He does none of these things, sitting in silence, free to drink his discomfort away into the small hours of the morning. 

When the news comes that the queen has taken the thief’s hand and sent him on his way, Costis breathes easier. He falls into a sleep so deep that he doesn’t dream, and when he wakes, his hand is splayed out across the right side of his ribs.

Months pass. The people talk of war. There is war, for a time.

And then - the thief of Eddis steals a queen. 

_Eugenides_ steals a queen.

And Costis reels with something akin to horror when he realizes, that somehow, against all odds, his soulmate has become the King of Attolia.

Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that Costis grows to resent him. After all, he spent most of his childhood resenting his second name. The guards talk. They speak in hissed, furious whispers and not so quiet jeers of this plague of a man who has stolen their queen and made a mockery of their kingdom. Costis only sees the man from afar, but what he sees is enough.

Eugenides isn’t a king. He slouches in the throne. He mocks. But what’s more - he is weak. And a weak king standing next to their queen - regal and ruthless - seems all the weaker for it.

It isn’t premeditated, whatever they might say of it later. Eugenides is there, so close that Costis can smell him, and he is saying something about the inadequacy of their guards to let their queen be stolen out from beneath their noses, and the next thing Costis knows, his knuckles are stinging and Eugenides is on the ground before him, swearing loudly as he clasps a hand over his lower jaw.

In the barracks afterwards, Costis has time enough for regret. 

He will die, which is unfortunate, but he will also die knowing that he has shamed his family, condemned them, stolen their home surely as the king has stolen the queen. And he will do all of this knowing that the reason it happened was because he was a damn fool who lost control of himself and laid flat the man who was not just the leader of their country, but also the owner of the name he’s had scrawled across his ribs since birth.

He paces, and thinks, and agonizes. He wonders over the fate of Irene, who will never meet him. Of Eugenides, who may not realize until after Costis has been hanged just who he has condemned to death.

When night comes and the king comes stealing into his room with it, Costis is almost grateful. He will die, but he will do so having spoken to this person whose soul is so entangled in his own that the gods would leave his name on Costis’s very skin.

“Costis,” the king says, and gives him wine.

“Costis,” he says, and refills the cup.

Costis, and Costis, and Costis. His name, over and over, at the start or end of every sentence, as if Eugenides does know his name for what it is. Costis drinks the wine, and thinks of all the missteps he’s taken. He drinks until he makes another mistake, and when the queen is there, he thinks it is over.

“You have not yet ordered a hanging,” she says to the king, and Costis can feel her cool disdain from where he is plastered to the floor, his cheek to the stone.

“I do not want to hang him,” Eugenides says, and something seems to pass between them before the queen narrows her eyes and hisses something about justice.

Costis listens, and when he speaks, it is only in defense of Teleus. He deserves his fate. Teleus does not.

And afterwards, when the queen is gone again, and the king is still there, smiling at him, Costis breathes anew.

Over the next few weeks, Costis grows to know this Eugenides. He is perplexing, and childish, but there are strange breaks in his character that make Costis begin to doubt his own judgement on the matter. 

When the assassins come, Costis promises ten golden cups and doesn’t stop to think of what that may mean. 

Eugenides is close and smells of perfumed roses and blood, the heat of him pressed against Costis’s side. He is bleeding on him, leaning on him, mocking him gently with a smile on his face, and it is easy in that moment to believe the gods themselves decreed that Costis would love him. 

When the queen meets them on the stairs and Eugenides takes her by the chin to kiss her, Costis feels a peculiar twist in his gut. The queen is so close that her curls brush against Costis’s cheek. She smells of Eugenides, or perhaps he smells of her - perfumed roses and sandalwood. 

It is a strange, awkward experience, being so near it, yet never further away.

He helps the king the rest of the way to his chambers, and once there, he stays, watching, because he has not yet been ordered away. There is a moment, when the physician pulls the cloth from the king’s shoulders, that Costis catches a glimpse of something on the curve of his wrist- a smudge of black writing on brown skin, but the sheet is rucked up before Costis can get a better look.

Later, when the queen falls, Costis catches her. He thinks nothing of it as Eugenides fights the people holding him down, tears his stitches to get enough leverage to see her. Thinks nothing of it until the king’s head is pushed into the pillows and he breathes, quiet and pleading, “Irene?”

Costis breathes in sharply through his nose, and looks down at the queen - the woman in his arms. She has a name. She has a _name_ , and it is Irene, and Costis is floored and trembling slightly, very aware of her form in his arms. 

When they take her from him, he nearly forgets himself. The urge to keep her gathered close to his chest is so strong that for a moment, Costis is sure that he will swing at them. Instead, he lets them take her, and after she is gone, he stares down at his empty arms. 

She is Irene, and he is Eugenides. At birth, the gods may as well have written Attolia and Attolis into Costis’s skin. 

Eugenides says something else from the bed, but all Costis catches is the words “wife” and “blood.” He clenches his fists until his knuckles are white, and then he stands, and watches, white-faced, as they finish stitching his king up.

The queen’s rage is a horrible thing. He’d known it before, and knew it now. Still, Costis pleaded and Eugenides obliged him. They quarreled, and Costis was only ever on the edge of it. He heard of the fight from the guards instead of from their lips, and when the queen called him to watch over the king, he did so gladly.

He watched Eugenides sleep, daring to watch him breathe, his lashes a smudge of black against his smooth cheeks. And when he woke in the night, Costis leaned forward in his chair, wishing for the warmth of his bed, and told him to go back to sleep.

The night of the nightmare, Costis watches the king get sick into a basin that the queen herself is holding for him. He feels strange, at once too near and too far. They are the sun and moon, and Costis is the stardust that orbits them, bearing witness to their magnificence only from afar. 

“I love your eyes, I love your ears, and I love every single one of your ridiculous lies,” the queen says several moments later, once the king is done being sick. As she says this, she bends to kiss him - first his eyelids, then his ears, then his slack and unresisting mouth. 

Costis watches them. He feels small and wanting.

He stays at the king’s side when he can. He is largely ignored, but every once in a while, the king will look up and smile at him. There is a bloom of warmth in his chest when he does this, a similar bloom on the rare occasions that the queen is in the room with them. Costis looks at her now, her dark curls piled meticulously atop her head, the rubies at her ears and throat, and thinks it impossible that she be meant for him as well.

Several days later, once the king is better, Costis is dismissed. Smartly, soundly, as if without a care. He passes the days. There are fights and misplaced tiles, and he does not think of any of it. He does not lurk about, to get word of the king and queen, but all the same, it comes to him. He hears of all that goes on in the palace, and when the king’s attendants come for him, he is expecting them.

The king is on top of the crenellations, a distant silhouette that dances in the sky. Costis watches him leap from one to another, and feels something - a heady mixture of terror and exhilaration, then thick and viscous worry. 

If you get him down, the king’s attendants tell him, we will give you whatever you want.

The night is cool, the breeze a light caress upon his cheeks, and all Costis truly wants is drunkenly tempting fate. He fights them on it for a moment, but in the end he goes. He was always going to go.

“Costis,” Eugenides says when Costis reaches him. The night is colder up here, where the wind cuts. The moon swells in the sky in the distance, reflecting against the sea. 

“Please get down,” Costis thinks he says, and the king smiles at him, tosses him a wineskin, and balances on one hand.

“Oh my god,” he breathes, and for a while, they speak of gods. Of knife fights outside of wineshops, and stray arrows, and misplaced tiles. And then, for a moment, they speak of truths.

“She cut off the wrong hand, you know,” Eugenides tells him thoughtfully, gaze on the distant stretch of the horizon. “She couldn’t have known, of course. I never showed her.”

Costis licks his lips, and the thought blooms before he can chase it away, horrifying as it is apt. 

“Her name,” he breathes. “It was on your hand.”

“My wrist, if you must know. She never saw it, and no one thought to look once it was done.” He takes a steady breath, then hops to the next ledge. “Wonder what they did with that hand.”

“I would have thought that they would have sent it back with you,” Costis tells him, and Eugenides pauses, brow crinkled in thought.

“I don’t think they did. But then, I wasn’t in much shape to know at the time. I’d just had my hand cut off.”

“She must have borne your name though,” Costis says. “She would have known.”

The king hums. “Yes, well. Our queen is quite stubborn.”

Costis shudders. _Our_ queen.

“If I may ask, where are your marks, Costis?” Eugenides asks him, crouching on the wall like a cat, knees bent. His dark eyes gleam, and Costis wishes that he were nearer, that he would come away from that wall and go to bed like a normal monarch. 

Costis swallows, and finds that his throat aches. “Pardon, Your Majesty?”

Eugenides narrows his eyes, and though he doesn’t come closer, it feels as if he has. His presence swelling larger between them. An awareness. A truth, unspoken. 

“I asked,” he says softly, his voice no more than a breath. “Where your marks are, Costis Ormentiedes.”

“I-” Costis says, and hesitates. For the first time, it occurs to him that if he bears the names of the king and queen upon his skin, that they too must bear his. He licks his lips, pushes his spine straighter, and confesses, “My ribs, Your Majesty.”

Eugenides eyes him for a moment, his gaze dropping down Costis’s body as if he can see through his very clothes. There’s a long moment of silence, in which Costis does not quite know what the king is looking for, and then he is leaping back up to his feet, glancing away from Costis. He says something - something about the wine not working - and nearly goes tottering over the edge.

Something stops him. A god. _His_ god, who tells Eugenides very simply, “Go to bed.”

And then he is in Costis’s arms, trembling, and Costis is not letting go. 

Costis can feel the king’s breath hot against his ear. They are both shaking, and holding one another, until the king finally pushes away. Costis follows him to his attendants, and then follows them towards the king’s chambers. 

When the king pushes out onto the rafters, Costis follows him, unbuckling his sword belt and handing it to a speechless attendant. He is tired, so very tired of all of this. When Eugenides catches sight of Costis behind him, his eyes go very wide. He spins around, teetering for a moment, and then hisses, “What the hell are you doing?”

“Following, My King,” Costis tells him very seriously, taking careful, measured steps towards him. 

There is something exhilarating about being up this high, knowing that a simple misstep could mean your life. He watches Eugenides waver, uncertainty in his eyes, and when Costis reaches him and stands still before him, the king wrinkles his nose and takes Costis by the hand.

“Very well,” he sighs, and drags Costis the rest of the way across the atrium, to the balcony on the far side. 

Once they are out of sight of the attendants, the king glances at Costis over his shoulder. A brow is arched pointedly. “Care to tell me what that was about?”

Costis takes a breath, filling his lungs with sweet air. It grounds him, that breath. Makes him braver.

“You asked about my marks, Your Majesty,” Costis says mildly. “I thought you might like to see them.”

Eugenides trips, and Costis catches him by the arm easily. 

They look at each other for a moment, truth laid bare between them. The king’s eyes are dark, darting from the door several steps away which leads to his chambers, and then coming back to rest on Costis’s face, his chest, his waist. The king raises his hand and lays it atop Costis’s chest, just below the breast bone.

Costis licks his lips. 

“Lower,” he says, and takes his king by the wrist, dragging his hand down until it is in the right spot. “That one is yours.”

Eugenides’s lashes flicker. “Then-”

Costis leads the hand to the left, over the curve of his ribs, to the spot just below his heart. “This one is hers.”

“She should be here,” the king says, his fingers trailing over the curve of Costis’s rib.

“Yes,” Costis agrees. 

It is a simple thing. She should be here. With them.

Eugenides’s eyes flicker back to the door, and he seems to steel himself, taking a deep breath, like he too is grounding himself for this moment. Then he takes Costis by the wrist, and pulls him into the room, shutting the door behind them.

The hallway between the king and queen’s chambers is dark. There are candles held in sconces along the walls, but Eugenides does not stop to light them. He pulls Costis along behind him, traversing the narrow hallway by memory. 

When they reach the door to the queen’s chamber, he only hesitates for a moment before pushing it open.

The queen’s rooms are extravagant, golden, like a honeycomb. Costis has only been inside of them once before, and he had been awed then, in the daylight with her attendants for company. Her chambers are dark now, and she is in bed, her dark hair loose across the pillows. Moonlight spills in through an open window, making her pale skin shine. Her eyes are open.

“Husband,” she says simply, pushing herself up into a sitting position. The sheets spill down her body to pool at her waist. She is in a night shirt, simple and white, embroidered with flowers. It is the same shift that the king had been wearing the last time Costis was in these rooms. 

Her eyes come to rest on him. She inclines her head, something like amusement lurking at the corner of her mouth. “Costis.”

Costis does not bow, because it does not seem right. Instead, he merely inclines his head in turn, and murmurs, “My Queen.”

“I’ve brought you a gift,” Eugenides tells her, dropping Costis’s wrist to cross the room to her side. He takes a seat on the bed near her covered ankles, and then they are both looking at him, eyes gleaming in the dark.

Costis finds that now that he is here, he does not know what to do. He stands there, arms at his sides, and tries not to fidget.

“Your gift does not seem very talkative,” the queen murmurs in a stage whisper. 

The king smiles, reclining back against the sheets, using his elbows to prop himself up. “Perhaps he is shy.”

Costis’s cheeks color. “I apologize-”

“Costis,” the queen interrupts, her dark eyes still sparking with amusement. “Come here.”

Costis goes, crossing the room on unsteady legs to pause before her. Before them. The moonlight is on all of them now, and he is very aware of what he has done. The steps he has taken, and the thing that he has put into motion.

“Would it help if I showed you mine first?” the queen asks, and Costis sucks in a sharp breath, trembling. As he watches, she unfastens a button that lurks unseen at the nape of her neck, and the night shirt spills down her collarbone to pool at the swell of her breasts. 

Ringing her collarbone, like a strange necklace, are two names, one on either side. A mirror, like his. He wants to reach out and touch, but is still unsure of his welcome. Can only look and see the way that his own handwriting looks next to Eugenides’s strange script. His is, if possible, even more inelegant than the king’s cramped, blocky text. It is a scrawl, truly, hardly legible unless you knew what you were looking for.

Costis blinks, and glances to the king, who obligingly shakes back the sleeve of his good hand, and turns his wrist to show Costis the name there. 

“I won’t do you the disservice of showing you the other,” he murmurs, and something like pain flashes in the queen’s eyes. He lays his hand atop hers without looking, and she softens, going still. 

They look at him expectantly. 

Costis peels his shirt up and off, as carefully as he can, pausing only to drop the garment behind him. Their eyes are on him, and as he watches, the king pushes himself back up, reaching out to tug Costis closer to them. He stumbles, pulled off balance, and one knee lands atop the bed between them. 

Eugenides is looking, but it is Attolia - the queen - their Irene, that first touches. The tips of her fingers are cool, and they look narrow and pale against Costis’s skin. She touches first her own name, and then Eugenides’s, her mouth caught half open in soundless awe.

When she tears her gaze away from the names, Eugenides is already looking at her. They exchange a look, some silent exchange that exists in the space between them, and then her fingers are on Costis again, this time encircling his wrist. 

Her eyes are dark and bright all at once, gleaming with anticipation or promise. 

“Will you come to bed with us, Costis?” she asks, and he swallows. And swallows again. 

He cannot, _must_ not refuse her, but cannot for the life of him think of a response that suits. In the end, he coughs, and his voice is rough when he chokes out a yes.

The bed is soft. It is a bit awkward, maneuvering both himself and the king into suitable positions, but when they are still, he is caught between them, their hands laid out atop his ribs. 

“Costis,” the queen says, and he tilts his head back to look at her. 

She is peering down at him, her loose hair lovely in the moonlight. She looks softer like this, her face unpainted, hair loose, no gold or jewels to be seen. It’s exhilarating seeing her like this, seeing both of them like this, away from the prying eyes of the rest of the court. He has caught glimpses, these last few weeks, windows into their private world, but it is nothing like being here with them.

“She wants to kiss you,” Eugenides whispers from his other side, and his wife’s expression twists. 

“Yes,” she says, and reaches out to tangle her hand with his own. “Would you like that?”

He cannot think of a response to this either, but as it turns out, he doesn’t have to because Eugenides’s hand is creeping up his thigh, pressing between his legs. Costis hisses as the king cups a hand around him, and Eugenides snorts, his breath hot on Costis’s neck.

“Oh, he would very much like that, I think,” he says, grinning, his eyes dark with amusement. 

“My Queen,” he says, and she cuts him off, placing her hand across his lips as she shakes her head.

“Irene,” she insists, softly. “You will call me that here, and only here.”

He nods. Says, “Irene,” as if the name has been ripped out of him. 

She bends her head and kisses him. It is a chaste kiss, soft and sweet. A good first kiss. At their side, Eugenides hums thoughtfully. 

“You can do better than that,” he says, and it isn’t clear which of them he is talking to until the queen tilts her head and deepens the kiss, her fingers sliding into Costis’s hair. Costis lets out a quiet, wanting noise, his heart hammering against his ribcage. 

“Much better,” Eugenides tells them, pleased.

When they break apart, Irene’s eyes are glassy, her lips red and wet. Costis looks at her a moment, sees the way her eyes flicker to the man next to him, and doesn’t need to be told. He simply turns, and catches Eugenides by the jawline, pulling his startled mouth down to catch his own. 

Eugenides makes a noise, soft and startled and pleased all at once, and squirms, his hook arm coming up to loop around Costis’s neck as the other seeks out the warm skin along his belly. He is a great deal more enthusiastic a kisser than the queen was, squirming halfway into Costis’s lap before the kiss ends. 

They are panting, and Costis can feel how the kiss has affected him. How it’s affected them both. The queen hooks her chin over his shoulder, and as one, they turn to her.

She is smiling. It is a soft smile, private and happy. As they watch, she presses a kiss to the bare skin of his shoulder, and then leans over him to kiss her husband.

He spends the night with them, tangled between them under silken sheets. He learns things about them both, how Irene shakes when kisses are pressed to the tops of her thighs and how Eugenides will call out unless he is kissed quiet. 

In the morning, he will slip from their bed after extracting a promise from his king. He will wander the palace halls as the dawn begins to break, and will be waiting in the training yard when Eugenides wakes. 

The names scrawled across his ribs are warmed through with kisses and will stay that way until the next night, and the next. 


End file.
